Hidden Gold

'When they had finished all there was of both food and drink, he produced a packet of Gold Flake cigarettes, and they smoked for a while, contented and at rest.'
A Glastonbury Romance John Cowper Powys, 1933.
    Some of you may remember this photograph and quote from my book The Cigarette Papers, published by Frances Lincoln in 2012. It was a eulogy for the cigarette packet, brought out as a reminder that a government directive was in the offing to dispense with any individual brand design whatever. With no proper proof that it was going to work in decreasing both smoking itself and its appeal to the kiddies. We all know that smoking is simply not very good for us at all, but no authoritarian dictates about how a pack should look will make the slightest bit of difference.
    I say all this again because it's about to happen for real and a totally legal product that still produces millions for the Exchequer will be reduced to taking ill thought-out orders from a grey government 'design' manual. But more than this I get very dismayed by the revisionist stance that makes anybody who talks on, say, a television antiques programme, has to make sure that any remarks about tobacco packaging and artefacts are bracketed with sanctimonious and hypocritical tut-tutting about the dreadful practices of the smoker and smoking. What would the Tommy, going over the top out of a muddy trench in 1917 with a Woodbine clamped in his mouth, have thought of us.
    Anyway, if you'd like more anecdotes and extracts from literature about the fabulous packets we were once able to see without the Tobacco Police fingering our collars, then you'll find the last fag ends of The Cigarette Papers here, very cheaply indeed.

Cig Lit.

I've been away for so long Blogger have gone and changed the format for writing posts. Anyway, grovelling apologies for such a prolonged absence. Much is happening in Unmitigated England, but amongst many good things is that today a friend appeared clutching The Cigarette Papers in his hand. "Sign this" he said. It wasn't supposed to be out until early June, but here it is. If there's anyone still out there reading this, you'll remember that this book has been in gestation for at least five years. It's my eulogy for the cigarette packet, when they were beautifully executed pieces of design and without hectoring government notices and lurid photographs plastered all over them. It's full of still life photographs and galleries of packs and cigarette cards, accompanied by my stories, anecdotes and extracts from literature- Gauloises being lit up by Len Deighton's nameless hero, that sort of thing.

I've had such fun putting it together: having ideas, choosing locations, discovering sentences in odd places like a Gold Flake packet appearing in John Cowper Powys' A Glastonbury Romance. An evening at a workbench in an isolated Northamptonshire shed, an afternoon amongst roadside dandelions, and a memorable morning on a Cumbrian beach waiting for the sun, whilst my glamorous assistant impatiently stood by waiting to ripple a rock pool with a stick. A really big thankyou to all of you who helped. I enjoyed it all immensely, I hope you will too. 

Lighting-up Time

Recent events in my life have made me think about taking up the smoking arts once again. I've forgotten exactly when it was I threw the last empty Marlboro packet in the fire, but it's within a timeframe that means that I'm still hesitating as I buy a paper and see the ranks of cardboard boxes whispering at me 'Go on. The odd one won't do any harm'. Of course it would, which is why I gave up in the first place. Not because of hectoring Government advice, the Tobacco Police or being patronised by ASH. And certainly not because of the heinous demands that have been forced on a totally legal product in terms of on-pack health warnings and lurid pictures of strangers' diseased offal. I almost lit up again on the 1st July when smoking was banned in pubs, another bullying directive based on extremely suspect science. But if I do succumb (and I hope I don't) then I want it to be a totally subversive activity. Putting untipped cigarettes into one of my collection of empties, (Gold Flake or Capstan Full Strength favoured) driving at night to an isolated country church and exhaling blue smoke out amongst the branches of a graveyard yew. Just to make some obscure point.